Buy What You Love, Pay What You Should
Columns
-
1955 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible
Seemingly every salvageable one was dragged out of fields, barns, and garages and restored, which made supply exceed demand This example is one of the best 1955 Bel Airs extant. This 1955 factory convertible just saw completion of a body-off, no-expense-spared three-year restoration of a 100% numbers-matching car with one mile since. Every part on…
-
1933 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza
I know a number of extremely knowledgeable individuals who simply state that if they could own only one collector car, it would be an 8C 2300 In the early 1930s, Italian road racing, and motor sport in general, relied on various tiers of competitors to fill the grids: factory entries, successful privateers, loosely organized regional…
-
1951 Ferrari 340 America Spyder
SCM’s Thor Thorson once reported that one 340 owner refused to take his car on a vintage rally, as driving it was just too awful Some of the most fascinating Ferrari automobiles originate from the earliest years of the company, a time when Enzo Ferrari was still in the process of developing a recognizable identity…
-
1962 Austin-Healey 3000 Mk II Rally Car
The last surviving 1962 team car has rally provenance in abundance, but it doesn’t have an original chassis The Big Healey’s first major success was in 1960, when Pat Moss and Ann Wisdom made history by winning the grueling Liège-Rome-Liège (Marathon de la Route) event outright. It was the first occasion that a woman had…
-
1970 Maserati Ghibli Coupe
The styling of the Daytona, while certainly attractive, has not achieved the timeless elegance of the Ghibli A strong contender for the “Most Handsome Car of the 1960s” title, Maserati’s Ghibli debuted at the Turin Motor Show in November of 1966. Styled at Ghia by Giorgetto Giugiaro, the Ghibli rivaled the Ferrari Daytona for straight-line…
-
Yelberton and the Duesenberg
When I was growing up in San Francisco, my grandparents and I watched the ’49ers play in Kezar Stadium. Or, more correctly, we drove to our weekend farm in nearby Novato, which was just outside the 30-mile blackout range of the broadcasts, to watch the games on television. I remember the sometimes-heated discussions that occurred…
-
Finding a Ferrari for $100k or less
Mondial values are abysmally low and their deferred maintenance issues are long. To quote Monty Python: “Run away, run away” This month our esteemed editor wanted to move away from the high-end Ferraris to the bottom-end world of affordability for mere mortals—perhaps he is still suffering from million-dollar-Monterey shock. My mission statement was: “Find the…
-
1972-73 Porsche 917 Interserie Spyder
Steve McQueen was “The Man” for a generation, and racing through the night in a blue 917 became the holy grail of many fevered imaginations Over three tumultuous seasons of World Championship endurance racing, Porsche’s 4.5-liter—and later 4.9 and 5.0-liter—917s fought a no-holds-barred battle with Fiat-Ferrari and their 5-liter, V12 Ferrari 512s. The Porsches proved…
-
1967 Chevrolet Corvette L88 Convertible
This car could scare the unmentionable out of the small-bore Eurocentric entries in tours, or it could graduate summa cum outlandish from other events. In 1965, Zora Arkus-Duntov’s Corvette Engineering Group began developing the new 427 Mark IV engine for use in the Corvette as a full-bore endurance-racing engine, and in 1967 their work came…
-
1956 Maserati 200SI
Unlike most high-value sports cars seen on the track, at concours or auction, this car doesn’t boast a better-than-new respray. It has no paint at all Chassis 2401 occupies a place of distinction in the evolution of Maserati sports racing cars, as it was the first 200S chassis produced, the works development car for the…